Melody Amber: Aronian leads by a full point

3/23/2008 – After seven rounds of the Blindfold and Rapid event Levon Aronian has 9.0/14 points, one more than Vishy Anand, who is in second place. Anand had some problems in his round six blindfold, but pulled off a convincing victory anyway. Others were not that lucky. Then again Anand suffered his first ever defeat against Magnus Carlsen in round seven. Illustrated report with video links.

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The seventeenth Amber Blindfold and Rapid Chess Tournament is taking place
from March 15 to 27 in the Palais de la Mediterranée, Nice, France. Twelve
leading grandmasters play blindfold and rapid chess games against each other.
The prize fund is a massive 216,000 Euro (currently US $336,000). The sponsor
is Dutch billionaire Joop Van Oosterom.

The famous and beautiful beach front in Nice, which rhymes with Reese (Witherspoon)

Monte Carlo, where the Amber tournament was previously held, has its Formula
One races, Nice has its International Hopscotch Championship. Actually the tourists
are doing stretch exercises during a jog on the beach front.

A first crisis occurred in this game when Sergey Karjakin played 7.Nf3.
The players are entering their moves on a notebook, the opponent sees them in
algebraic notation next to an empty chessboard (only the last move is displayed).
Anand misread Karjakin's move as 7.Nb3 and played on with the wrong position
in his mind!

White has moved his rook away from the f-file and Black has a killer: 22...Nfg4!
23.Kg1. After 23.hxg4 Qh4+ Black at least loses his queen. At this
stage Anand was confronted with a second problem: he considered 23...Nf2 but
could not remember if his rook was on f8 or not. If it wasn't then the intended
move would simply drop a piece. The world champion decided not to risk it and
played the safer 23...Rf2. In a blindfold game making an illegal
move does not have dire consequences – one simply has to make another,
legal one. Anand's move was legal and crushing: 24.Qxf2 Nxf2 25.Kxf2
Rd8 26.Kg1 g5 27.Ne2 g4 28.hxg4 Nxg4 29.e5 Qh4 0-1.

Rapid chess game between Veselin Topalov and Magnus Carlsen

In their blindfold game Magnus Carlsen was lost against Veselin Topalov, but
pulled off a miracle save with three pawns against Topalov's knight and pawn.
In their rapid chess encounter things turned out similarly:

In this position Kramnik was expecting his opponent to play 24...Nxe4 and intended
to offer a draw after this move had been made. However, Gelfand made a "fingerfehler":
24.Qxe4?? This of course loses the queen and the game. However:
Vladmir Kramnik did not wish to win in such a manner and offered the draw anyway.
"What a gentleman!" Gelfand was heard to say. Draw.

Round seven: Blindfold Chess

Round seven: Rapid Chess

Morozevich-Ivanchuk

1-0

Ivanchuk-Morozevich

½-½

Kramnik-Van Wely

½-½

Van Wely-Kramnik

½-½

Leko-Gelfand

½-½

Gelfand-Leko

½-½

Mamedyarov-Karjakin

½-½

Karjakin-Mamedyarov

½-½

Topalov-Aronian

½-½

Aronian-Topalov

1-0

Anand-Carlsen

1-0

Carlsen-Anand

1-0

Vishy Anand won his blindfold game against Magnus Carlsen with consumate ease,
continuing the pattern of picking up points from the talented Norwegian. However
their rapid chess game broke the spell and 17-year-old Magnus scored his first
ever win over the world champion. He did this running his clock down to one
minute, while Anand sat on 16 minutes of remaining time. Here is the historic
game:

See also

3/27/2018 – Sergey Karjkin didn't succeed in posing serious problems for Ding Liren and after, what he called, a "terrible blunder", he had to scramble to save a draw. That left Caruana in great shape to win the tournament. Mamedyarov struggled to find winning chances with black against Kramnik, but in the end that game ended drawn as well. Caruana, needing only a draw, was in command against Grischuk and even won the game to finish in clear first by a full point! | Photo and drawings by World Chess

See also

1/28/2018 – Magnus Carlsen won the 80th Tata Steel Masters which was decided in a blitz tiebreak over Dutch number one Anish Giri. The players contested two blitz games with 5 minutes plus 3 seconds per move, with no sudden death Armageddon game needed. Vidit played solidly to earn a draw that was enough to win the Challengers, as Korobov could not manage to pull off a win with black on-demand. | Photo: Alina l'Ami TataSteelChess.com

Video

The setup for White recommended by Valeri Lilov is solid and easy to play – the thematic moves are almost always the same ones: Nge2, 0-0, Bg5 (or Be3), Nd5, Qd2. Later, according to Black’s setup, things continue with f4 or even Rac1, b4 and play on the queenside. Starting with the classic Botvinnik-Spassky, Leiden 1970, the author describes this universally employable setup in 7 videos (+ intro and conclusion).

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